It has been some time since I last wrote anything here and that is due to big changes that happened in my life recently : I am now a married man!
My wedding was in mid August and that was followed by an exciting and lovely honeymoon in Europe, which included 4 day stay in Rome and a Mediterranean cruise that took us through Italy, France and Spain!
Suffice it to say, the last two months have been very busy, hectic, exciting and fun.
My wedding and honeymoon taught me a lot of new things about the importance of saving and budgeting. Valuable lessons that will make me appreciate these two financial concepts even more, for the rest of my life. I will try to share some of these valuable lessons here while expanding on the rest in future blog entries.
Wedding Finances
As someone whose ethnic background are all about big weddings, I had to go with the flow and plan a relatively big wedding. It cost me a fortune, but it was a great wedding and we had a blast. Although we didn’t go cheap, we still budgeted and saved and at the end we didn’t lose any money, which we are very thankful for. I learnt that while planning a wedding, you tend to not care much about small expenses, since you are already paying big amounts for everything else. But that shouldn’t be the case. These small expenses can add up to thousands and they all take from your bottom-line. And this being a wedding-a once-in-a-lifetime-event-you should enjoy the day as well as the people and not worry about how much money you will lose or even profit. Worry about having a great time first and the rest will take care of itself. At the end of the day, financing the wedding was a lot easier thanks to all my savings which I started some 2 years ago. If you know you will get married eventually, why not start saving from now?
Honeymoon Finances
Thanks to my wife, our travel agent and lots of research, we were able to have a great and amazing honeymoon in Europe without having to worry about whether we can afford it or not. And here again, the key was our savings which we started 6 months before our honeymoon. While on honeymoon, you are bound to run into things that you will want to buy and since it is your honeymoon, there is nothing wrong with spending money on these special items and moments. But you have to know when to say no, otherwise you could quickly overspend your budget before you have even gone through half of your honeymoon. Resist the temptation to just buy anything that comes your way, even if it is not available in your own country. First, ask yourself if you really need that item? and if you do, is it worth it, given the price? and last, ask yourself if you can wait to find it cheaper somewhere else?
The best feeling is to enjoy your honeymoon and come back home with some money in your pocket, which you managed to save despite all the enjoyment and buying you did. This money was spared thanks to our ability to stick to our budget and not wasting money on useless things.
I so enjoyed our Rome stay and European cruise that I would like to do it again soon. But for that to happen, we will need to start saving money from now. Well, at least we have one more good reason to save money and not spend it on useless things.